33 Keys to Thriving During a Recession by Marcia Yudkin Author ppt

So treat current customers as gold, and make sure they know about everything you offer.. Action Step: List three ways you can make sure current customers become aware of other products o

To the Rescue!

33 Keys to Thriving During a Recession

by Marcia Yudkin

Author, 6 Steps to Free Publicity and 14 other books www.Yudkin.com

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Copyright 2008, 2012 Marcia Yudkin All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

Are you walking around with gloom and doom in your head?

If so, put all the recession talk aside and take a walk down Main Street Do you see people carrying shopping bags? Going into restaurants? Using cell phones?

You see, life goes on Business goes on Customers still need you Yes, they may be more cautious about spending Some may be in financial trouble But if you keep your head on straight, you’ll ride out the recession just fine

Tackle the first three or four items in this report today, then consider one more idea every day after that

In a month, your business will be hopping again I promise!

Three Fundamental Principles of Marketing to Remember

1 Mine your customer list

Whether the economy is up or down, it costs five times as much to obtain a new customer as it does to sell more to an existing one So treat current customers as gold, and make sure they know about everything you offer

Action Step: List three ways you can make sure current customers become aware of other products

or services you sell that they may not have needed (or known about) up to now

2 Repeat, repeat, repeat

Marketing succeeds with repetition Do not try to economize by cutting the frequency of your marketing outreach According to a study by the American Business Press, in past recessions companies that maintained their advertising had increased their sales four times more two years later than companies that had cut their advertising because of the economic downturn

Action Step: Analyze where you are spending your marketing budget and reallocate it as necessary

so that you are implementing repeated impressions instead of one-shot promotions

3 Stop marketing, and you soon won’t have a business

I once asked a client of mine who closed down her business to retire how long it took after she halted all of her marketing before the calls stopped Six months, she said Too often I’ve seen consultants become complacent about how well word of mouth was working for them One day they’d wake up and realize referrals had dried up, and they’d have to begin creating a marketing pipeline, which might not start yielding new clients for months In both good times and bad, you must market to keep sales humming

Action Step: If you have relied on referrals for bringing in new customers, create a plan for

bringing in prospective customers that does not assume any word of mouth at all

How to Keep the Business Flowing

4 Emphasize the value you provide

Whenever possible, position your offering as an investment rather than an expense – not

necessarily by using the word “invest” but by making it extremely clear how and why the customer will be better off having bought your whosiewhatsit For instance, suppose you sell a weekly menu service that provides recipes and a shopping list for wholesome family meals Instead of allowing the consumer to think of this as a luxury (after all, they can do this on their own, without paying for it), explain why subscribers are able to stretch their food budget while serving their families more healthful, delicious and varied meals Explain the hidden costs of grocery shopping on impulse or with a flawed shopping list

Action Step: Sit down and list all the ways your buyers are better off for doing business with you Include benefits that are tangible (they save money) and those that are intangible (they feel secure about such-and-such)

5 Make sure clients are happy with what you’ve done

Create some sort of feedback routine in which you give every buyer the opportunity to tell you what went wrong – or right – with their purchase If someone gives negative feedback, fix the problem immediately Do not tolerate shortcuts or shortcomings! Reputation reigns supreme when people are concerned about spending money on something that may not work as advertised

Action Step: If you have a walk-in operation like a retail store, create a suggestion box or feedback forms that everyone receives If you have an online business, regularly survey customers for their opinions on how well you are living up to their expectations

6 Have a risk-free introductory offer

For example, 1AutomationWiz.com, the online shopping cart I use, offers a free 30-day trial You sign up, set up the cart and can use it for real transactions without having to pay until the 30th day (By then, you’re hooked!) As a variation on this theme, Changing Course initially charges just

$13.55 shipping on its $297 Fast Track Your Dream program They ship the materials, then begin charging the program fee on day 30 The buyer can ship everything back before day 30, then not be charged For a non-monthly service, you can get the customer’s credit card information or check up front, but promise not to charge the card or to return the check if the customer isn’t happy

Action Step: Create an offer for new customers that lets them try you out with a delayed charge or some other sort of money-back guarantee

7 Develop and sell information products

Information products offer a low-risk, low-commitment way for new customers to get to know, then trust a vendor company You can sell them to do-it-yourselfers who might not spring for full service as well as to regular customers who want to learn about a new topic area Not only do the information products provide an additional stream of revenue during the recession, they will

continue to do so after the economy picks up again (as it inevitably will) with no additional work

To get products ready for sale within weeks, see “The Five Easiest-to-Complete Information

Products” at www.yudkin.com/easiest.htm

Action Step: List ten things you know like the back of your hand that customers are often asking about Which of these are important enough and hard enough to find information about that people would pay for what you know? Assemble your knowledge in a printed booklet, online report or downloadable audio that you charge for

8 Catch their pulse

What do your customers need most right now? Put your ear to the ground Listen in on your target market’s complaints, questions and wishes where they hang out on email discussion lists and web-based forums Based on what you hear, add a new product or service or twist an existing one so it clearly connects with their concerns Let’s say that on the financial forums you see more questions than usual from couples nearing retirement or parents with more than one child in college You could quickly create seminars, reports or telephone hotline hours specifically for those groups

Action Step: Invite five of your best customers or clients to lunch (separately or together) and find out what’s new in their work or personal lives What are their biggest frustrations and needs at the moment? When you get back to the office, draw at least two lessons from the lunch discussion(s)

9 Create special offers

Instead of a long “a la carte” menu of products or services, or an indefinite invitation like “call us and we’ll figure out how to meet your needs,” put together specific packages of what buyers

receive with a special price for a limited time For instance, a spa could promote a Get Ready for Summer Special, good through June 14 The deadline and a clever name for the offer both help motivate customers To avoid training your clients to hang back and wait for a discount, try adding irresistible bonuses like a free MP3 player or “two for one” coupons at a local restaurant rather than cutting prices

Action Step: Thinking ahead to the next seasonal milestone or holiday in the calendar (Mother’s Day, Back to School, Get Set for Winter, Valentine’s Day), create a special offer for new and existing customers connected to it and determine the best way to let them know about it

10 Multiply your freebies

If you have just one giveaway item you’ve been using to generate leads, develop additional ones and encourage those in your network to tell their friends, colleagues and family members about your new freebies Not only do such samples help get people over the hump of hiring you for the first time, they enable you to reach out to potential customers who don’t yet know you exist What you are looking at now is a prime example Not only did I give it away to my Marketing Minute newsletter subscribers, I invited them (and you!) to send it along to others Make sure your

giveaway item delivers outstanding value and is not a promotion in light disguise Freebies can include no-cost events and surprise bonus items as well as reports

Action Step: Your freebie can be a physical trifle (free tastings at your bakery), something sent in the mail (Amazon.com once sent me a travel mug out of the blue; Google once sent me a

collection of recipes) or a coupon for a service (free neck massage) You can even team up with a related business to offer your freebies to the other and vice versa

11 Contact inactive clients

According to copywriting guru Bob Bly, simply by calling past clients to say hello and to find out what’s going on in their business, you’ll get an average of one out of ten giving you a new

assignment because you showed up in their awareness at an opportune time “Don't call up and say,

‘I'm not busy and need work right now; do you have any assignments?’” he warns If you’re not the

“just wanted to chat” type, a good excuse for getting in touch is “I’m calling to get an update on the results you had from the last project we did together How did that work out?”

Action Step: Make a list of customers who have not bought from you this year, but did so in the past Devise a plan to contact each of them personally by phone, postcard, letter or email and let them know you were thinking of them

12 Pursue a more receptive, ready-to-buy audience

This might mean targeting more upscale prospects than you have been, reexamining the zip codes

to which you mail promotions or going after clients in industries less affected by the economic downturn, such as IT, energy, education and health care For your company, the relevant indicator might be the availability of time rather than money For example, when the economy slows down, people might have more time for scrapbooking projects, do-it-yourself home improvement or finishing a book manuscript

Action Step: Take out a sheet of paper and create two columns In the left column, describe your typical customer today In the right column, list untypical and other possible customers who differ from your typical customer Are any of those listed in the right column worth going after in

today’s economy? If so, come up with a plan to do just that

13 Look for leverage

If you work with a group rather than individuals, you can earn more in the same amount of time even while each customer pays less An ingenious implementation of this is a program called

“Fitness by Phone” in which personal trainers keep clients motivated for their workouts by

telephone rather than in person Note also that neither the trainers nor the clients have to travel to work together this way – a relevant factor when gas prices are high

Action Step: Consider ways in which you can incorporate a group element into your business If you’re stumped, think of five kinds of businesses different from yours that could institute programs for groups of customers Then see which of these ideas could translate into something for you

14 Pursue publicity

Getting media coverage can be as quick as picking up the phone and calling the news desk of your metropolitan newspaper or TV station to explain why you’re the local angle to today’s big story Invest a little time to understand what constitutes newsworthiness in the eyes of the media, and pitch your company or yourself in pitch letters and press releases During a recession, you may have a better shot at earning 15 priceless minutes of fame because competitors may have scaled back on the retainer for their PR firm A cost-effective compromise between writing your own releases and hiring someone to do it for you is the press release makeover service of

PressReleaseHelp.com

Action Step: Go through today’s paper and analyze why any businesses that received coverage there did so What ideas does that suggest for you? Make a plan to get highlighted in the news sometime this month

15 Follow up automatically

Autoresponder technology from companies like Aweber.com, Getresponse.com and some shopping carts enables you to create a sequence of timed messages that gets triggered by a request, purchase

or signup Put this sequence in place once, and it tirelessly continues educating or selling for you from then on Some shrewd entrepreneur is soon going to enable the same kind of automatic

triggering for postcards and other mailed pieces In the meantime, postcard and lettershop vendors like PostcardBuilder.com let you design a piece online, then upload your database for sending on a specific date Be smart and get follow-up systems working for you now

Action Step: Plan a system for creating routine follow-up just after customers have bought This might consist of a pitch for the next logical purchase from your offerings, a general discount that expires in a week, a request for feedback, an offer for a free introductory consultation or something else that would keep a new customer engaged with you Create this plan today!

16 Collect testimonials

Here’s something else to take care of if you’re not already doing it: Tell service clients and those who’ve purchased your products that you’re looking for success stories How have they benefited from your offerings? Ask permission to use a concise, juicy version of their comments on

postcards, on your web site and in sales presentations If you’ve been collecting written

testimonials, maybe it’s time to step up to audio and video ones Testimonials that describe specific results help persuade on-the-fence prospects

Action Step: Contact at least five recent clients and ask what happened for them after buying from you and for their general comments on doing business with you If they respond positively, ask permission to quote them by name in your publicity and promotional materials Most of the time, such people say “Yes, of course.”

17 Develop “lite” versions

For example, take your software, reduce the functionality and sell the bare-bones version at a lower price Extract a chapter from a book and present it as a special report or booklet In some markets, you can profitably do the same for just your bibliography or up-to-date helpful resources The travel publisher Lonely Planet pulled all the information relevant to just a city from its longer, more comprehensive country guidebooks and published pocket-sized (and somewhat cheaper) city guides perfect for a weekend visit to Madrid, Florence, Amsterdam and so on

Action step: Think of at least one way you can scale down a product or service and put it up for sale in a smaller, less expensive version Then get going on promoting it

18 Adapt for a new audience

Got something you sell to Canadian small businesses? Make the necessary changes so you can sell

it in the U.S or South Africa, or create a version for nonprofits, or for children One of my clients has an offering consisting of audio CDs, a book and workbook that she’s planning to retarget to a

zillion specialized professions simply by redoing her sales material and publicizing the slightly renamed product to professional associations and trade magazines

Action step: If you’re not sure who your new audience might be, look for clues within your

existing customer database Investigate customers who are outlying or unusual because of their age, location, profession, hobby or appearance to find out whether they might represent the

vanguard for many others like them

19 Become timely

Refer to the current situation in your marketing Explicitly relate your expertise and what you do day after day to what’s most on people’s minds Let’s say you run a day care center These days, you provide a refuge for children from their parents’ worries Or you sell home heating fuel

Explain how you’re working hard to help hard-working families keep their homes warm this winter

Action step: Jot down ten things that are particularly on your customers’ minds these days – everything from their dwindling retirement fund or an upcoming election to family concerns like kids passing those new standardized tests to trendy issues like tracking one’s carbon footprint Select at least one issue on your list you can tie into credibly in a promotion, blog post, customer newsletter or special price offer

20 Add a personal touch

Call people you would ordinarily just email Reply cordially and at more length to those who respond to your newsletter or blog Reconnect with colleagues on a personal level When you read magazines and come across an article you know would interest a certain client, rip it out and mail it with a sticky note attached Such thoughtfulness reverberates much more than you might imagine

If you don’t already send handwritten thank-you notes for referrals, begin now Staying top of mind helps channel many different types of opportunities toward you

Action step: Today, add a more personal touch to at least three customer interactions, whether that’s a big smile, a phone call out of the blue or a handwritten “thanks” on a receipt

21 Inject fun into your marketing

Which would you rather do business with, a company that at every opportunity reminded you of the dark cloud over your head, or one that made you smile? Forbes.com reports that both in 2008 and in the recession year of 2002, Halloween spending did not go down, even though most people were tightening their purse strings According to National Association of Theatre Owners president John Fithian, movie box offices took in more money during five of the last seven recession years than during other years If you’re normally a dead-serious company, this might be a good time to lighten up a bit by creating a company mascot or passing along some self-deprecating jokes

Action step: If you have employees, bring in treats and promise a tempting prize to the employee who suggests the best, most workable idea for creating some fun for customers If it’s just you, treat yourself to a day at the zoo, aquarium or beach while you ponder the question of how to add a fun factor to your business

22 Revive past successes

Chances are, you have something you created or did a while ago that worked but then you dropped

it or never repeated the event or special offer Unearth it, update it if necessary and relaunch it Dig

up your half-successes, too – sometimes with the passage of time, you see exactly how to tweak them to make them work brilliantly now What you’re reading now partly comes from a handout for a seminar I gave in September 2001 but totally forgot about until I was well into the

brainstorming for this report Likewise, my downloadable report “Inspired! How to Be More Original, Inspired and Productive in Your Work” is a reworking of a creativity newsletter I had published for two and a half years

Action step: Search your physical or computer files or your back room for old stuff that you can profitably update, finish or bring back

23 Consider complaints and objections

Steve Harrison, co-owner of Bradley Communications, watched his business tank after the 9/11 attacks On the verge of shutting down the company, he decided to go through with a repeat

speaking engagement that had previously never yielded much business This time, he realized that audience members didn’t feel ready yet for what he was pitching, so he added several additional components to the product that would get them ready The tens of thousands of dollars in orders he received that day brought his business back from the brink of collapse You too might be able to tweak something that hasn’t been working by figuring out what’s been keeping people from

buying

Action step: Select something that didn’t work out as planned and list at least five possible reasons why it didn’t fly Redo the idea to overcome one or more of those objections and try it again

24 Shake up your routines

List all the constants in the way your organization operates – its “always’s.” For instance, you always work Mondays through Fridays Is it time to work Tuesdays through Saturdays – or just Tuesdays through Thursdays? You always hold your seminars in Chicago Would they be more appealing in Charlotte? You always focus on one topic in your newsletter What if you shared a grab bag of useful tips instead?

Action step: Do at least three things differently from usual this morning and keep a running list all day at your desk of other things you could do differently Before you knock off work for the day, select one item on your list to implement for a small but significant permanent change

25 Ask for advice

If you’re not sure which of these tips to act on or how to implement these suggestions, join a peer group – sometimes known as a Mastermind Group – to help you do so It’s no more complicated than each member of the group having a turn to pose a question, taking down all the suggestions offered, then sharing your thoughts on which ideas seem most promising so the group can propose additional possibilities When being offered suggestions, don’t interrupt with “No, that won’t work!” or “Tried that one…” Simply listen and identify the ideas you like Can’t rustle up

mastermind partners? You get caring colleagues to bounce ideas off of in my Marketing for More mentoring program

Action step: Think of a current dilemma and three colleagues, friends, employees, relatives or customers you can ask for advice on it Then go ahead and ask at least two of them

26 Keep an eagle eye on collections

Professional debt collectors say that the longer a bill remains unpaid, the more likely it is to

become uncollectible And of course, those who make noise get paid first Big companies know this I let my bills sit on the kitchen counter a little too long last month and received automated calls from both the telephone company and the electric company about it, even though the amounts involved were quite small One tactic that can help your cash flow and prevent worries about uncollectible receivables is to offer a discount – such as 2 to 5 percent – for payment up front Action step: Look over your accounts receivable and determine how many people or companies that owe you money are late in paying Do you need new policies on prompt payment? Do you need different billing or payment procedures? Do you need more follow-up? List what you can do

to lower what is owed to you, and then get cracking